In making individual edible products by starting with a large mass of dough, one basic objective is to generate a minimum amount of waste or scrap. If the dough pieces are to be generally square or rectangular, it is known that cutting or slicing a continuous dough sheet into pieces does produce satisfactory results. However, if the dough pieces are to be generally circular or oval as in the case of making most ready-to-serve cookies, it has been found that the cutting dies typically used in a sheet/cut method produce an unacceptable amount of scrap. In addition, if the ready-to-serve cookies are of laminate construction having layers of dissimilar dough such as that disclosed in the revolutinary teachings of commonly-assigned U.S. Pat. No. 4,455,333 to Hong & Brabbs, which is incorporated herein by reference, any scrap resulting from the cutting operation is extremely difficult to separate into the individual components for subsequent recycling.
Another approach to making generally round individual dough pieces is to continuously extrude a rod-shaped dough rope onto an endless conveyor belt followed by cutting the rope into individual pieces. Various apparatus for cutting dough pieces from extruded ropes have been proposed; for example, those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,528,900; 4,534,726; 4,578,027; and 4,647,468. In each of these patents, various types of blunt cutting elements are reciprocated vertically down through the dough rope and into contact with the conveyor belt upon which the rope is carried. In addition to subjecting the conveyor belt and overall apparatus to significant impact loading and vibration caused by such motion, it has been found that these general types of cutting elements leave much to be desired because some portion of the dough rope is inevitably trapped between the cutting element and the conveyor belt, thereby generating waste that must be eventually scrapped away.
In making individual edible products from a large mass of dough, another basic objective is to form dough pieces that are of substantially constant size and shape. This objective is particularly important when a fixed number of products are to be subsequently packaged in a fixed-sized container, an example of which being a plastic tray having two or more rows of product overwrapped in a bag. If the individual products are not of substantially constant size and shape, a given number of products will not fit in the tray, which in an automated packaging operation will cause product breakage, package rejections, and perhaps significant downtime.
Some edible products made from a dough contain discrete morsels, an example being a chocolate chip cookie. As discussed in commonly-assigned U.S. Pat. No. 4,643,904 to Brewer et al., which is incorporated herein by reference, it has been found that consumers generally prefer morsel-containing edible products to exhibit a high degree of "morsel show" or "chip show," i.e., ones where the morsels are readily visible by casually inspecting the product's outer surface. As also discussed in Brewer, one known method of making edible products having highly-visible morsels is to sprinkle morsels onto the dough's outer surface such as is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,643,084 to Gomez. However, it has been found that this general type of system is unacceptable because depending on the tackiness of the product's outer surface, many of the morsels fall off the dough as evidenced by Gomez' need to include a morsel trap to recover dislodged morsels. In addition, if the dough pieces are subsequently baked, it has been found that in the case of chocolate chips, the chocolate melts or "bleeds" all over the cookie's outer surface, which gives the cookie an unsightly appearance.
In light of the above, a principal object of the present invention is to provide a high-speed method of and apparatus for cutting individual dough pieces from a larger mass of dough that are of substantially constant size and shape.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a method of and apparatus for cutting individual dough pieces from a mass of dough while generating a minimum amount of waste or scrap.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a method of and apparatus for tamping an individual dough piece having discrete morsels sprinkled thereon to press said morsels firmly into the piece's outer surface.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a method of and apparatus for cutting individual dough pieces from a laminated dough rope comprised of dissimilar layers of outer and inner doughs such that the outer dough substantially encapsulates the inner dough.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a method of and apparatus for forming individual dough pieces having highly-visible morsels.
These and other objects, advantages, and novel features of the present invention will become apparent to those skilled in the art from the following detailed description and appended claims.